The Real Head Coaches of Denver™ Lard

Douglas LeeJan 10, 2011 7:29 AM

Good Morning, Broncos fans! You know all that talk about the Broncos' ironclad secrecy under Josh McDaniels? The Belichick-like tightening of the lines of communication? If the past few days are any indication, the Broncos under John Elway will be overcompensating like a teenage girl who just discovered eyeliner. In a rather bizarre (and frankly unnerving) twist, the team posted a video of Perry Fewell (who speaks very well) riding to his interview from DIA, and then a mid-interview picture of Fewell and a pre-interview shot of Eric Studesville.

Transparency is great and all, as is the unprecedented access that Elway has provided with his new Twitter account. But while an NFL head-coaching gig is a very public job, and it's desirable of any candidate to be comfortable in the spotlight, there's just something uncomfortably voyeuristic about this new approach. What's next? Is Elway going to tell Peter King that Fewell had bad breath or that Studesville was mixing tenses?

Makes one again wonder why Mark Mike Mularkey snubbed the Broncos on their interview request, no? If you were a seasoned coaching candidate (ie. not a young hotshot), and a team said, "Come interview with us. One condition though - the second you get off the plane, the cameras will be rolling and you'll be on Bravo later that night," what would you say? It'll be interesting to see if John Fox gets the same treatment today...

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No worries, Chi. I didn&#8217t take it personally, I&#8217ve seen your stuff enough to know better.

Posted by pubkeeper on 2011-01-11 15:34:46

Pubkeeper, that came off sounding overly critical of you. My apologies.

I&#8217m not really in the bash-the-organization-at-all-costs camp. I&#8217m glad they&#8217re doing this (even though I&#8217m going to be cynical about it). I think you&#8217re right that seeing the actual coaching candidate does a lot to make the fans feel comfortable. I wish the team had done this the last time around. I saw film of McDaniels coaching the receivers in like May 2009, and it was impressive for those reasons&#8212a relaxed, smart guy casually in control of his environment. It&#8217s a powerful corrective to the temptation to parse a coach&#8217s body language on the sidelines, and it&#8217s good to see.

Taking the Kriegers and Woodys of the world out of the loop, and making their access less exclusive is really awesome gravy. I don&#8217t know if that&#8217s done by design or accident, but the result is great.

Posted by Chibronx on 2011-01-10 18:07:22

@NDbronco I was just saying that just because one young, promising guy didn&#8217t work out it doesn&#8217t mean you have to swing back to Mr. Safety Blanket.

Posted by ohiobronco on 2011-01-10 18:02:01

I agree ohiobronco&#8230bring back McD. He&#8217s still under salary, so we should be able to make him work. <img alt="smile" height="19" src="http://www.singernet.com/images/smileys/smile.gif" style="border:0;" width="19">

Posted by NDbronco on 2011-01-10 17:47:42

Fox would be too safe of a choice, with too little upside for my liking. If the goal is to get back to respectability as quickly as possible he is the guy. However, longer term I see him as a guy who will hover around .500 with a playoff berth every few years. In other words, the post-Elway Shanahan era.

If the goal is to eventually become an elite team that competes for Super Bowls, the team needs to assume more risk on someone with more potential. Regardless of the outcome, I believe the McDaniels hire was an appropriate level of risk vs. the potential payoff.

Posted by ohiobronco on 2011-01-10 17:44:09

OOYElement,

I agree. Look at the way Peter King is falling all over himself try to backpedal away from his &#8220Elway thinks Tebow sucks&#8221 statement. In the past, nobody would&#8217ve said anything for at least 48 hours, by which time a massive controversy would&#8217ve been spinning out of control as the MSM would&#8217ve been regurgitating the &#8220facts&#8221. I&#8217ll bet ol&#8217 Pete is none too happy about being slapped back like that.

Posted by pubkeeper on 2011-01-10 17:35:24

Chi, I understand what you’re saying, I wasn’t under the impression that the 2 minute video was the entire interview and the Broncos did nothing to give that impression either. I guess I’m not an all-or-nothing, preferably nothing guy. By unfiltered, I meant seeing the guy in person say the things he did about Doom, hearing the inflection in his voice and how it seemed like a no-brainer to him. This opposed to reading Krieger tell me what he saw/heard at the airport and on the road. Honestly, it seems like such a small thing to get a little video footage out to the fans when they could do absolutely nothing, which it sounds like many here would rather have. I don’t know why. Of course the Broncos are going to spin everything as best they can, though here it was just raw footage, is there an entity in the world that doesn’t?

So I just don’t see the criticism here. I mean, it sounds “objective” to rip everything that comes out of the organization, but is it? I’m just a fan, I like the Broncos, I live in Minnesota, I like to see as much as I can of them and I’m under no delusions that I can see everything so the more the merrier. Nobody here has more access to the Broncos than I do as far as I know so I don’t understand the “they must think we’re stupid to want to see the coach going to his interview” thing. If a coaching candidate has to have complete anonymity and secrecy upon his arrival in Denver, he’s probably coming to the wrong city. I mean, what’s he going to think when the local paper criticizes him for his Halloween candy?

Posted by pubkeeper on 2011-01-10 17:31:20

Part of this process is to help the &#8220constituents&#8221 better understand these lesser name candidates and shine a good light on all. Part of the problem with McDaniels is no one got to know who he was before he was named coach.

Posted by Orange and Blue on 2011-01-10 17:14:45

With so much change happening over the last few years, why wouldn&#8217t the Broncos be the ones to control what news gets released? The fans have to rely on the Dullards and Adam Schfincter for their Bronco&#8217s related news?

I sincerely hope the Broncos organization steps up and truly administers the role of providing fans with timely (and likely targeted) Broncos news.

If done properly, this should be a win for all involved - Bowlen, coaches, players etc&#8230

Posted by OutOfYourElement on 2011-01-10 16:53:40

Exactly CB. This is pure PR, image protection, brand building, whatever you want to call it. This team is going to build an identity around The Duke and blast the fans with it. It should keep them dumb and happy while the real work of putting a year-in-year-out contender on the field plows forward.

I think it&#8217s a good thing, and I applaud the organization for going there. It had to go there. I would imagine a new coach coming in would view this PR strategy as a good thing. It should allow some cover from the fans during the extensive rebuild ahead, and when it&#8217s complete and&#8212knocks on wood&#8212the team is successful, the coach will get a ton of credit. The Duke will get a ton of credit too, but if there is a good partnership between coach, GM, VPO, then credit should be shared.

Posted by ButteBronco on 2011-01-10 16:01:47

haha, chibronx, never let them take your essence!!!

Posted by TJ Johnson on 2011-01-10 15:59:32

The problem with this unfiltered information, Pubkeeper, is that it IS filtered. For all we know, Fewell knocked the socks off of them by saying the team needs to go cover-2, that it will be a four-year process, and that the defense will stink until it&#8217s done. Or maybe he outlined a plan to play only &#8216cup&#8217 protections, in which the O-linemen interlock their arms. maybe he talked about little green men, or the threat of flouridation and the need for Purity of Essence. Excerpts of conversations like those would never make it into the film.

Selective transparency like this isn&#8217t really transparent at all. It&#8217s just a more cunning form of PR. I happen to think that&#8217s something the team badly needs, but I don&#8217t think we should assume a 1-to-1 correspondence between the publicly released film and what actually transpires. If the team is doing its job competently (I know, a big if), we should hope that they&#8217re releasing selectively impressive bits of film as a means of directing our attention away from the messy business of remaking a team.

Posted by Chibronx on 2011-01-10 15:36:45

I liked the footage, personally. I like to see people make their statements directly (like Fewell talking about Doom, etc.) so I can make my own call rather than having to have everything filtered first. I doubt seriously these guys take any issue with it. If that&#8217s why Mularkey bailed, GOOD! Seems petty to me.

Posted by pubkeeper on 2011-01-10 15:21:00

I agree with you Doug. The new &#8220user friendly&#8221 Broncos have gone a bit too far in the direction of openness. I do like the increased communication, and I believe that over time the team will get better at it. Giving us more information and giving it in such a way that it won&#8217t be distracting and cause them to issue twitter clarifications. Elway has never done this before, and he will learn what is the most effective way to operate.

But I do think that making an infomercial out of the interview was a bit bizarre.

Posted by Grover on 2011-01-10 15:15:41

This new approach seems a bit silly to me, and I&#8217m worried that the team is overreacting toits previously p-poor handling of fan relations. There will be some blow-ups and mini-scandals. But my gut is that the scandals begotten of this typs of thing are more ephemeral and silly, and will probably never earn a silly name equivalent to McJayGate. That&#8217s a good thing.

Have I mentioned yet today that Dav Krieger is boring? Since ousting McD, he&#8217s written columns on 1) we need defense 2) the next people running the team, should be good at it 3) we need to draft defense and 4) it&#8217s a good thing Andrew Luck&#8217s gone, &#8216cause defense is needed. If he were a movie director, he&#8217d ask the audience to spend two hours looking at footage of a Saltine cracker. Then he&#8217d ask you to come back for the sequel&#8230. also a Saltine.

Thanks Doug.

Posted by Chibronx on 2011-01-10 14:56:12

Thanks for the Lard Doug. You crack me up man.

It&#8217s clear that the Broncos feel they need to do a better job of communicating to the fans. IMO&#8212and I&#8217ve said this since the day Josh was fired&#8212Josh was fired due to poor organizational support and PR. The team needed a FO guy that could talk one-on-one with Woody, Big Al, [insert dullard here], and support Josh, communicating the massive organization change that was underway, publicly justify the trades, etc. Perhaps Ellis, and/or Bowlen were willing to do this and Josh&#8217s ego or NE-style secretive nature put a stop to it. Who knows?

Regardless, two things are clear a) the rebuild will be televised, and b) this team is trying to find an identity. Neither of which is necessarily a bad thing.

Posted by ButteBronco on 2011-01-10 13:54:59

I don&#8217t think the coaches are going to worry too much about the scrutiny, because it&#8217s something they&#8217ll have control over. I mean in Green Bay that kind of coverage would have been done by the news crews and that can get out of hand.

At the same time it might make them feel wanted and kind of like a rock star. I think it&#8217s good to show the candidates that Denver has a large fanbase that&#8217s going to want to follow them.

Posted by Fan in Exile on 2011-01-10 13:39:58

I don&#8217t want to be the anti-Patriots. I want the team to take some of the effective parts of the &#8220Patriot Way&#8221 and blend them with good parts of the old &#8220Bronco Way&#8221 as well as good parts of the teams the new coaches come from. You can&#8217t clone another organization, but you can learn from them.

Posted by ohiobronco on 2011-01-10 13:37:55

Thanks Doug.

I guess I see things different than you. I welcome the openness&#8230.its not like they filmed and replayed back the interview proper! I think that this an AWESOME way to do business, and the HC is going to be part of that. if they dont like it, probably wont be the HC I am sure John Fox will be fine with it.

I want to be the anti-Patriots, and do business OUR way. I have been watching comments from all over the blogosphere, and I have to laugh at a lot of them. Our fan base is generally scared of upsetting the status quo, yet complain when we interview a guy like Dennison (who I want as our HC) because its &#8220going back to the past&#8221. Yet, we had a guy here who tried to change the culture and the way the Broncos did business, yet he was ran out of town by the fans and ownership. Is it only me that sees this strange dichotomy???